Review of The Dark Tower (2017) by Scrawnypunk — 03 Aug 2017

The first thing to understand about the film is that it is not an adaption of The Dark Tower in its entirety, or any of the component books in part. Instead, it is a continuation of the story from the point at which Roland walks out of the Tower in Book 7. True fans looking for a continuation of the story might be rewarded. The rest of the world may be left scratching its collective head.

Leaving aside the feeling that the best stuff happened before the film starts, the second thing to understand is that any sense of awe and wonder is undercut by the previews. We’ve seen Roland’s otherworldly (literally) skills, and we’ve seen most of Walter’s magic tricks on Youtube, Apple Trailers, etc. This is a bad thing – what little chance the movie has for awe, wonder, and suspense is blown since we already know what will happen at crucial moments. The best example is when Roland blind-shoots Jake’s would-be captor: the scene is filmed to perfection, but we aren’t on the edge of our seats because it is effectively a re-run. I don’t blame the filmmakers here, but I do blame the preview editors.

As for the rest of the film, I’d call it “adequate.” Jake’s earlier scenes are great, but wasted as the troubled-but-visionary character trope gives way to a straight-forward fantasy quest. The vistas are magnificent, but give way to village scenes that look straight out of Costner’s Postman. Walter is evil, but so completely and casually so that we can’t be frightened (and who doesn’t want to destroy a cinematic universe these days? The action is fantastic, but how many other times have we seen someone in a leather duster shoot up a room full of bad guys? The film resolves, but there are a ton of contrived plot devices which cause the movie to skip anything interesting or character-defining (and let’s not forget that one of Steven King’s greatest skills is character development over long periods).

As a final (and positive) note, the cast is fantastic. Idris Elba is great as always, Matt McConaughey is silky-smooth, Katheryn Winnick (aka Lagertha of Vikings fame) is nearly perfect, and Lucas Hamilton does a great job of balancing Jake’s psychological “troubles” with a sense of awe and understanding of his destiny. Jackie Earle Haley gives what he has to a throw-away role, as does Claudia Kim. The only weak link is Fran Kranz, whose screen time leaves him without his usual ability to put an indelible stamp on a character. He is woefully underused here, but that’s really the only issue I took with the cast. In the end, I think we deserved a multi-season epic covering the actual books, bringing to life a truly unique fantasy multiverse. I think what we got was something more like a coda: like 1998’s X-Files or Twin Peak’s Fire Walk With Me. Vaguely interesting, but not really satisfying.